Three ‘internet characters’ recently recorded a podcast about what they wanted to see in MP3 players. Dave Winer of RSS fame, Peter Rojas of Engadget fame and Jason Calacanis of Weblogs inc fame.

What they discuss is very interesting. Mp3 players are huge, but they are also very irritating. The whole DRM (Digital Rights Management) thing is an extension of the restrictive ideology of large music publishers. Users want to share their music… Apple says ‘dont share’ … they say ‘buy’ and ‘dont you dare share’.

I think there are a couple of issues they miss in the podcast. I will address those in the next post. But I want to paraphrase the points they make:

An MP3 player should be like a hard drive … drag and drop tunes on it, and listen to them. Most MP3 players dont allow you to listen to the files that you dropped on them… you can only listen to the files that got on there via itunes (or whatever)…. this is done on purpose so that you cant copy those files to anyone else’s computer… and hence protect the interests of the big music publishers.

WIFI. If you could have WIFI on a podcast, then you could be downloading stuff whenever you are within network range. More like a Radio. You dont need a computer as an intermediary.

Publishing podcasts. If you have WIFI, then you could hit ‘record’, say stuff, then hit ‘publish’ and your recording would automatically get uploaded to your blog/podcast for people to start downloading….. again, cut out the computer in the middle.